(Note: Note the extra bait dangled before the recreationists -- as if
the hook weren't dangerous enough for the farmers! Words like
'protect' and 'preserve', like 'manage', simply mean Control. All the
while, the gullible farmers and others that take the bait, are trapped
and don't even know it. The following means that TAXPAYER
DOLLARS, not the USDA or state -- neither of which PAYS taxes -- are
being used to fund the extinction of farming and the eventual lockup
of these lands, which is the implementation of The Wildlands Project:
"...the U.S. Department of Agriculture paying about $99 million
and the state paying the rest.")

March 24, 2004

By Dan Nephin, Associated Press

Hookstown, Pennsylvania - Western Pennsylvania farmers will soon be
able to participate in a conservation program that pays them not to
farm fragile land in an effort to protect waterways.

Under the Ohio River Basin Conservation Reserve Enhancement Program,
western Pennsylvania farmers would be paid to allow the land to revert
to native grasses and vegetation, which helps prevent erosion.

Farmers will be paid $130 an acre to participate in the program, said
U.S. Senator Arlen Specter, who announced the program this week with
Governor Ed Rendell, U.S. Agriculture Secretary Anne Veneman and other
officials at a farm northwest of Pittsburgh.

Payments to farmers in conservation programs vary,
with some receiving about $43 an acre, Specter said. Pennsylvania
farmers receive higher payments because land is more expensive, he
said.

About half the states in the country participate in the conservation
programs. Farmers in the eastern half of the state could participate
in a similar program designed to protect the
Chesapeake Bay.

Such programs "are some of the new ways that we're able to really
preserve water quality and preserve
farming at the same time," Veneman said.

Rendell added [that] the program could also preserve
the land for wildlife -- a potential boon for hunters,
anglers, and the state's $9.6 billion hunting and fishing industry.

The program announced this week will cost an estimated $146
million over 15 years, with the U.S. Department of Agriculture paying
about $99 million and the state paying the rest.

The Conservation Reserve Enhancement Program, created
in 1997, is an outgrowth of the Conservation Reserve Program,
another program that also pays landowners to take farmland out of
production.

While the former program aims to broadly protect
land, the enhanced program targets specific areas of concern.

The existing program in Pennsylvania is open to farmers in the
Chesapeake Bay watershed, and about 80,000 acres have been protected
in the past four years.

Officials hope that by adding the Ohio River Basin project, an
additional 65,000 acres will be protected. Federal
officials hope the program will reduce sediment, nitrogen, and
phosphorous from entering the Ohio River and ultimately, the Gulf Of
Mexico.